I read six SF short stories last month and they were mostly okay

Well, three of them were good, the others were okay. All of them were from Amazon's The Far Reaches series of original shorts.

How It Unfolds by James S.A. Corey: This was meh and honestly pretty forgettable. In fact, I'm trying to recall enough detail to even talk about the plot and I'm struggling. Basically, Earth starts colonizing other planets using some MacGuffin transporter technology. Like, the whole thing makes no sense and it felt like Corey phoned this one in. I don't know if both Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck both worked on this or just one of them, but they probably should have just not. 1 out of 5.

Void by Veronica Roth: Murder mystery...in spaaaaaaace! I dug this one and it definitely cleansed the palate after the first story. A passenger on a starship is found murdered and it's up to the main character, a maintenance worker, to solve the crime before the ship arrives at port. 4 out of 5.

Falling Bodies by Rebecca Roanhorse: The best of the bunch, in my opinion. It's funny, but the meaning of the story didn't hit me until several days later. The main character is a human who was adopted and raised by a member of the alien empire that invaded and defeated Earth decades prior, but is now back among his own kind after an unspecified event (eventually revealed) that's caused me untold troubles. 5 out of 5.

The Long Game by Ann Leckie: One of the okay stories. In this one, the main character is an alien slug that goes on a journey to try and find a way to lengthen his species's lifespan. Not bad, but not a standout either.

Just Out of Jupiter's Reach by Nnedi Okorafor: The other okay story. Honestly, this thing was threadbare for plot, but I like Okorafor's afrofuturism enough that I will generally give her works a try. In this one, the main character and others are bonded to organic starships and sent out into space to explore and gather data. They're allowed to gather halfway through their mission for seven days and the story follows what happens during that week. 3.5 out of 5.

Slow Time Between the Stars by John Scalzi: My favorite of the six. This story has to be the most "unScalzi-like" thing I have ever read. It made me think of the Bobiverse. The only character in this one is the AI of an unmanned probe/ship that's launched on a mission to find suitable planets and colonize them for humanity by setting up the colonies, then growing new humans. Basically, it's like a seed ship, but instead of carrying fertilized embryos, it has the genome or whatever stored in it's memory banks.

We follow the probe as it travels the galaxy over eons and dwells on its mission and the nature thereof. It's pretty good. 5 out of 5.

All in all, the series was worth reading, even if one story sucked and two others were only okay. The others more than made up for it.

Finished: Reach for Tomorrow by Arthur C. Clarke

I finished reading this collection of the SF great's short stories a while back and I thought I'd give a rundown of the stories within.

Rescue Party: A survey ship from a multi-species federation is dispatched to our solar system after it's discovered that the Sun is about to go nova. Their mission is to explore as much of the third planet as they can and if possible, rescue as many humans as they're able.

This is a neat story because it's told from the perspective of alien explorers. They've never encountered humans before, so they naturally don't understand most of what they find as they explore the Earth. This leads to a tense moment where a group of them find themselves trapped on a subway car. They're rescued, but the whole expedition is forced to leave before the Earth is destroyed, so they assume that their mission is a failure. It isn't. They discover humanity's fate and it leads to an upbeat ending.

This is one of my favorite stories of the collection because of the alien perspective and the ending.

A Walk in the Dark: The back cover of the book describes this as an "old-fashioned ghost story set on an alien world", but I would describe it as boring. I love Arthur C. Clarke's stories, but this one was just not good. The plot is a simple one where the narrator is walking to a spaceport on the aforementioned alien world at night when his flashlight fails, forcing him to make the journey in pitch blackness. He becomes unnerved along the way because the darkness forces him to dwell on a stories he has heard about near encounters with something that may or may not exist on what is believed to be an uninhabited (prior to humans showing up, that is) planet.

I didn't like this one because there was no tension or anything. Maybe this would have been a chilling story back in 1950 when this short was originally published, but not today. The ending felt tacked on too. A Walk in the Dark is probably my least favorite.

Review: The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke (Spoilers)

I recently finished The Hammer of God and all I can say is that I love Arthur C. Clarke's books.

What's it about: Set in the year 2110, The Hammer of God revolves around the discovery by an amateur astronomer of an asteroid headed straight for Earth. Dubbed "Kali" after the Hindi goddess of death and destruction, the big space rock has the potential to wipe out life on Earth. The book follows the attempt by SPACEGUARD to prevent this by attaching a mass driver to Kali and slowly - very, very slowly - nudging it so that it'll miss Earth.

What I liked: One of the things I liked about THoG is that it didn't focus solely on the efforts of Robert Singh, captain of the spaceship Goliath and its crew to save the day. Instead, Clarke devoted a large chunk of the book to worldbuilding 22nd century human civilization and while it might at times have seemed like he was going off on wild tangents that immediately didn't seem to have any relation to the main plot, Clarke deftly tied all of these side trips together. For example, he focuses several chapters on "Chrislam", a fusion of Christianity and Islam created in the early 21st century that by the 22nd, has become the fourth largest religion on Earth. He doesn't explain any of the tenants or doctrine of the religion and you're left wondering at first as to why he devoted the two or three chapters to the religion, until near the end of the book when a fanatical faction called The Reborn sabotage efforts to divert Kali and almost wipe out mankind on Earth.

Recent reads: Spinneret and A Call to Duty

I've been meaning to post about the science fiction novels I've read since my last roundup and wow, is it ever slim.

 First up is Spinneret by Timothy Zahn. It was an interesting book, but didn't really wow me. The story is about humanity finally making it to the stars, only to discover that all the planets in this part of the galaxy have already been spoken for and there's no sharing.

Well, almost all of the planets. There's one, whose name I can't remember, that is habitable, but not inhabited. The United States (there's no world government in this story and the Soviet Union still exists) leases the planet in what the rest of the world regards as a boondoggle.

Why has this planet gone uncolonized? Because it's completely devoid of metals. As you can guess, the plot revolves around why and the attempts of the main characters to protect the colony once the secret is revealed. It's not a spoiler since it's included in the summary on the dust jacket, but the planet's big secret is that an ancient alien civilization built a huge machine that absorbs metals through the ground and converts them into huge cables that it then launches into space. The cables are invulnerable, have a highly adhesive surface and other properties that make them highly desirable.

A big reason why I read it was because of the cover, which reminded me of one of those 4x strategy games, like Master of Orion. Like I said, Spinneret is good but not great. It's worth reading, but don't expect to be bowled over.

Next is A Call of Duty by David Weber, Timothy Zahn, and Tom Pope, who's name isn't on the cover but is credited in the foreword. Weber and Zahn explain in the foreword that the reason Pope's name wasn't included was for marketing reasons. There was concern that having three people's names on the cover would make potential readers think that A Call to Duty was a short story anthology and not everybody likes reading those. They also point out that Pope's name would appear on the covers of the sequels and it has.

So anyways, A Call to Duty is the first book in the Manticore Ascendant series that acts as a prequel to the rest of the Honorverse. I'm debating doing a separate post about this book later on, so I'll keep it brief here. The story follows three plotlines. The first is about Timothy Uriah Long, a young man who craves order and discipline in his life, so he joins the Royal Manticore Navy. The second plotline follows the attempts by a group of politicians to get rid of the RMN in favor of the interests of their leader, Lord Breakwater. This is still the relative early days of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, when they were still a single system entity and had yet to discover the wormhole junction that would make them a major power.

The third plotline and the one that ties the other two together revolves around a group of mercenaries who are planning to steal two warships from a major ship sale that the Republic of Haven holds later on in the book.

All kinds of shenanigans and hijinks ensue that make A Call to Duty a fun and exciting book to read. I recommend it.

Fortune's Pawn by Rachel Bach: An interesting premise that never gets off the ground

Fortune's Pawn is the first book in Rachel Bach's (real name, Rachel Aaron) Paradox Trilogy.

Devi Morris isn’t your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It’s a combination that’s going to get her killed one day - but not just yet.

That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn’t misnamed: it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she’s found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn’t give up its secrets without a fight, and one year on this ship might be more than even Devi can handle.

This premise caught my interest because I've never read a military sci-fi novel about a merc serving on a ship before, cargo or otherwise. Typically, when I do read mil SF, its about soldiers or naval officers, so I was willing to give this book a read and before I even finished it, I wish I hadn't. While the idea of a tough female merc serving as a guard on a cargo ship that acts as a magnet for trouble was intriguing, the plot itself was a major letdown.

Finished: Star Trek Vanguard: Summon the Thunder [SPOILERS]

It was pretty good. It had a bit more action in it than I remember Harbinger having, which wasn't a slouch itself. Quinn and Pennington weren't as annoying as they were in the first book, mostly because the latter didn't spend the entire book whining about his dead girlfriend. That's not to say that Harbinger was in any way an inferior book. David Mack had the difficult task of setting the stage, establishing characters, etc. for the rest of the series (with help from Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore, no doubt) while staging within a certain page length, so it stands to reason that he couldn't add as much action and space battles as Ward and Dilmore did in Summon the Thunder.

Finished: Star Trek Vanguard: Harbinger (spoilers)

(via Memory Alpha)

It was pretty good, but felt more like a pilot episode than a novel. What I mean is, the book mostly established multiple plot threads for the rest of series and didn't really resolve anything except for the destruction of the Bombay by the Tholians.

Can we just talk about for a second? A pre-refit, TOS era (Harbinger is set just after the events of Where No Man Has Gone Before) Miranda-class took on six Tholian heavy cruisers and destroyed four of them out before being destroyed herself. Damn, son! No wonder the Reliant kicked the Enterprise's ass in Wrath of Khan!

What a pre-refit Miranda might have looked like.
(via Memory Beta)

Anyways, back to the book. The premise for the Vanguard series is pretty cool: The USS Constellation (you might have heard of it) discovers something called a meta-genome in a sample of mold that they were transporting back from a planet called Ravanar in the Tarsus Reach, a far off sector of space outside Federation territory. Yup, outside Feddie territory and right between the Klingon Empire and Tholian Assembly. What could possibly go wrong? The meta-genome proves to be important because it contains a lot of information; too much, in fact, to be anything but artificial. So, Starfleet fast-tracks the construction of Vanguard, a watch-tower class starbase in Tarsus Reach. They also assign three starships to the base: the already mentioned Bombay, the Constitution-class Endeavor, and the Archer-class Sagittarius. The Archer is a small scout ship that was created specifically for the series and has appeared outside of it as well.

Like I said, there are multiple plot threads established in Harbinger. One is that a member of the Federation diplomatic staff on Vanguard, Anna Sandesjo, is actually a Klingon spy and the lover of the station's intelligence officer, T'Prynn. There's another plot thread with the latter. T'Prynn had a very dramatic experience during Pon Farr. Her mate was a physically abusive dickhole of a Vulcan named Sten, who she killed during kal-if-fee (remember that fight between Spock and Kirk in Amok Time?) and well, it did not end well for her. Sten forced his katra into her mind and it can't be removed with it destroying hers in the process. So, she faces a daily mental battle with his katra assaulting her mind until she submits. There's also a secret relationship ongoing between Commodore Diego Reyes, the commander of Vanguard and his JAG officer, Captain Rana Desai.

Then there's Cervantes Quinn and Tim Pennington. Not in a romantic relationship, but their lives are connected throughout the novel. Quinn a smuggler/man for hire working for an Orion crime boss based out of Vanguard. Pennington is a reporting working for the Federation News Service. Quinn is responsible for the destruction of the Bombay when he accidentally destroys the sensor screen (while trying to steal it) that a team of Starfleet engineers and scientists were using to hide their top secret project on Ravanar. The Bombay was sent to rush a new sensor screen to the planet. Pennington's girlfriend was a bridge officer on the Bombay. Their separate threads connect throughout the novel until the very end when they become entangled. Presumably, because I don't know if Pennington and Quinn are even in the rest of the series. Honestly, it took a while for me to warm up to Quinn and Pennington branches of the plot and even then, I didn't like them much. Pennington brought the Federation close to the brink of war with the Tholians with his expose on the latter's destruction of the Bombay because he wanted to bring justice for Oriana, his girlfriend. Quinn just didn't wow me. He mostly just slunk around, got drunk, got beat up, and then got even more drunk.

The ending and the introduction of the Sheddai, which apparently is some sort of ancient advanced alien species was intriguing, but nothing new. It piqued my interest nonetheless.

Overall, I liked Harbinger regardless of its faults. Every book is going to have them. I like the way David Mack handled Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise in the story. They were there and helped move the plot along without overshadowing the book's cast of characters.

Rating 8/10. Recommended.

Thoughts on the Doctor Who Christmas Special: The Snowmen

I liked it, but felt it could have been better. The Doctor's new companion, Clara, is intriguing and I can't wait to see more of her. Going by the promos for the next season, she's definitely a firecracker!

Look at that dapper frakker.
And the Doctor doesn't look bad either.

I think what hurt the special was the difficulty of doing an Christmas themed episode year after year. Murderous snowmen was an interesting idea, though, even if the plot was a bit wanting.

Hit the jump for the rest, but fair warning:

Allen Steele's Coyote

So, I finally got around to writing this thing. Hum! This won’t be a real review, more of a thought and criticism of something in the book. I already covered the plot of the book here, but in essence, the book is about a group of dissidents from a future America that’s been taken over by far-right politicians and turned into a police state, who steal the starship built by the latter, and head off to colonize the moon (Coyote) of a gas giant in another star system. Hit the jump to read my main problem with the colony.

And 1632 is finished

Excellent, excellent. There won't be a detailed review, since I suck at writing them, but suffice to say, it was a really good book. I was bothered by how well both the population of Grantville and everyone in the 17th century seemingly adjusted and came to terms with the situation, but that's the only problem I had with the book and even then, that was a moderate gripe at best.

9/10.

The Ghost Brigades - A review

So, as I previously mentioned, I just finished The Ghost Brigades, the second book in the Old Man’s War series by John Scalzi. Here’s a one word review of the book: Awesome. And here’s a two word review: Frakking awesome. That not enough? Well, hit the jump for a longer one. Spoiler warning, though.